Sustainable intensification of cereal-based farming systems in Eastern and Southern Africa

Project Inception Workshop

6-9 February 2012, Dar es Salaam, Tanzania

Targets' working group (Dave Harris)

• Context: data from one of the target regions in Tanzania. Avg gross margin without labour costs: ranging from USD 77 to 145/ha between sorghum, millet (finger and pearl), maize. Total benefit per household without labour: USD 28 to 119 / household. 11cts / day daily income for crop production.
• What is potential for any household: it depends on a) the amount of land required, the profitability of any cropping enterprise and ??? The amount of land required to achieve USD 1/day - median value: USD 84/ ha / season going up to USD 260 / ha / season;
• ==> There are lots of technologies but in absolute terms they don't bring farmers anywhere near the poverty line;
• Questions: did you include shadow price? --> Some had it others not.

• First target: How realistic is the first target on?
  • How big is the target area?
  • System productivity can be assessed in many ways (per ha, per hh etc.);
  • The target ought to be limited to adopting households - in relation with development targets;
  • Different approaches used in different contexts: let's use different targets for different sets of farmers;
• Second target: Reduce system variability
  • Irrigation, drought tolerance, diversification, improve resource base (in association with primary gains by farmers), agroforestry and livestock, pest resistance for crop and livestock.
  • This project is moving towards CRP 1.1 in terms of structure, partners, common sites etc.?
  • We talked about equity
• Third target: 75% reduction in harvest and post-harvest losses:
  • Post-harvest losses are not rocket science. Simple principles (keep harvest dry, kill pests etc.)
  • In terms of quick impact, this might fit the bill.
  • Consider indigenous knowledge;
  • There are lots of knock-on effects from reducing post-harvest losses e.g. food safety, market flexibility etc.
  • Links with other sectors through human health improvement via food safety
• Fourth target: 50% value addition to the harvest:
  • This needs a lot more discussion as to whether it's possible or not;
  • On-farm processing, co-ops etc. may be beyond the direct influence the project;
  • Sorting etc. could be easy to do;
  • Food preservation? Do we need to look at staple or cash crops?
• Fifth target: lift x thousands of people out of poverty.
  • 2 ways to measure poverty: head count and income increase;
  • In that context, where income - in the broadest sense - is so far below, doubling the head count is still far below decent targets.
  • We have to think carefully about how many people we want to lift out of poverty. Increasing their income is possible.
  • How to measure this? USAid uses an expenditure approach.
  • We are arguing for baseline data.
  • Growth of the asset base is a way forward? Many other issues affect poverty so this might be either a project level target or a program level target.
• Sixth target: eliminate hunger gap
  • We don't like this word 'eliminating' - it's possible to reduce it
  • Food crops as potential bridge across seasons? Making food available beyond normal seasons?
  • Indigenous knowledge matters here;
  • How are households coping with this?
• Some things missing in these targets:
  • Nutrition came back on the menu - it's implicit in the mission statement BUT causality is a big problem;
  • NRM and sustainability should be a primary target perhaps?
  • If we take on nutrition as a major objective, we need to describe pathways using improved nutrition;

• IFPRI has been working with BMGF on targets and goals. Where do people sit on the 1.25/2 USD/day. Clustering around 0.90-1.50 USD. In practice, many interventions are not targeting an extra USD/day but a mere 0.20 / 0.30 USD to lift them out of poverty. Given this, it may not be so difficult to lift them out.
• Multiplier effect in rural income: it can be quite large e.g. you get 1.50 USD extra. There is also negative feedback.
• The trick is also to 'contribute to' e.g. governmental and other donor interventions. The attribution issue is a way to be more realistic about our potential impact.
• Let's have aspirational targets but seek to mobilise action and energy to find evidence behind that aspirational targets.
• Two questions:
  • If taking the poverty line to USD 0.50, Africa pops out and Ethiopia even more. We need to be conscious of the target areas.
  • Goals that we have were indeed called 'goals' in Ethiopia and now they have become 'targets' which sounds like they need to be achieved.
• Poverty reduction is a combination of many factors. It is sthg we want to monitor over a long period of time but not pinpoint in figures like this.
• We can mention women, children rather than households etc.
• At the operational level, we cannot be held to account because poverty etc. are very high level outcomes. We're going to have to tell the high level story but we need to report in more detail the productivity growth and its link with poverty etc.
• These are really not research targets.